Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes — Stacie Lamoore

If you follow me on social media you’ll know that the last few weeks I’ve been stage managing a production of Roger’s and Hammerstein’s “Carousel”. With the wrap of the show last weekend I wanted to make a special treat for the cast party. If you’re not familiar with Carousel, one of the principle characters yells “Boston Cream Pie!” at a critical moment in the show. It is a humorous line and I thought I would capitalize on it for the cast party.When researching Boston cream pie I found out that it is not actually a pie, it is actually a cake. I thought this was interesting since I’d never tried it before. It is also typically made with Sponge Cake. Now if you look up a recipe for sponge cake you’ll be impressed at the level of detail needed to make it. You actually don’t add any leavening ingredients, you simply add the leavening by merenguing the eggs. Now I was making this recipe at 11pm at night, so I didn’t really have time to go to the length of making merengue, so I decided to make a couple of changes to my regular cake recipe that would result in a lighter, fluffier sponge type cake.One other thing my research in to Boston cream pie turned up is that originally the sponge cakes were soaked in a simple Rum syrup. Since the cast has a bunch of underage students and a pregnant woman participating this wasn’t really an option for me. Instead I used imitation Rum extract in both the cake batter and the pastry cream, at points where I could bake it off, simply to give it the flavor. [amd-yrecipe-recipe:73]

Source: Pastry Cream adapted from: Williams Sonoma